Lords of the Seventh House

What I Read This Past Year

2011-09-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

Last August, as an experiment, I decided I'd post candid reviews of the books I would read over the next year on Goodreads.com. For obvious reasons, I decided not to review current romance releases. It's impossible to be honest about friends' work and it's unwise to be honest about the work of competitors. But for almost everything else I read, I rated the book and wrote a few paragraphs explaining my rating, because if there's anything I hate as a reader, it's reviewers who don't explain why they liked--or didn't like a book.

Now that year is over, and I've completed 97 reviews. You can check them out here:

Jenny Brown's Goodreads.com Reviews

The best part of posting the reviews has been that it gives me the ability to go back months later and recall exactly how I responded to a given book. In the past, I might remember that I liked something, but the exact reasons would tend to fade away.

On the other hand, because I can't give every book a rave review, I'm probably piling up authorial karma for myself when I am completely honest about my responses to what I read. Being honest presents difficulties since I know people are out there reading and reviewing my work. I also know what a day-spoiler it is when they post harsh criticisms.

For that reason, as the year went on, I made the decision not to rate or review quite a few mediocre, but obscure, books I read this year. I knew the authors had received little from their books but the joy of publication, and I didn't want to ruin their days, especially if they were books that had little or no other reviews posted.

However, I felt no such compunctions in reviewing books whose authors received huge advances, massive publisher support, book tours, and sycophantic reviews that did not match up at all with what I found between the covers, especially when there were lots of other reviews repeating the judgements of whoever had anointed these authors as literary stars. I figured the authors of these kinds of books can survive a few discouraging words far better than most of us, and because I had read so many much better--and less hyped--books over this same year, I felt it worthwhile to warn readers who share my tastes that some of these books were a total waste of time and money.

What do you think? Do you review the books you read? If you do, how do you feel about what you do?

The Perils of Writing Historical Novels Accurately

2011-08-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those readers who likes authors to get the facts straight in their novels. I was not happy when one of my favorite mystery authors had his hero fill the tank of an old Sentra with 20 gallons of gas, because I had driven a couple of Sentras and knew that their tanks only held about 11 gallons. The author's error undermined my trust that other details he described were right. By the same token, I hate it when writers of historical romances write dialogue where characters use recent slang that would never been spoken by someone in 1985, to say nothing of 1805.

So this motivates me to do a lot of research about the things I put into my own books. I check the words I use in an etymological dictionary to make sure they were in use at the time of my story or not long after--since it takes a while for new words to appear in print. I research material details. If something appears in a room my characters walk through, it is often because I found it pictured in a contemporaneous print.

But I'm learning that using historically accurate facts in a novel can backfire, because the actual historical fact can conflict with what readers think they "know" based on their much more recent experience.

My hero's uniform is a case in point. Since I assigned him to an actual regiment that took part in the the Indian war I describe him as having fought in, I made a point of researching his uniform very carefully. I started out looking for images online and found a picture of a toy soldier from the same regiment. However, that toy soldier was dated a few years after my story took place, and further research into the history of that regiment taught me that my hero's regiment had been converted from a dragoon regiment to a hussar regiment the year after my story concludes, and that their uniform had been changed significantly after this conversion.

So that sent me back to do more research. Fortunately, through the magic of Google Books, I was able to find a book published only a few years before my time when my story was set that listed the specifics of the uniforms of each British Army regiment, including my hero's. It gave the color of the body of the uniform, the color of the facings, and of the lace, distinguishing between that found on officer's uniforms and that of the common soldier. Feeling on safe ground at last, I used it.

Only to have a reviewer insist I had gotten it wrong because her father-in-law--who one assumes was not in active service in 1820--had worn a uniform of a different color when he was in an Irish cavalry regiment. This, discrepancy, apparently, convinced the reviewer that my book was riddled with inaccuracies, an opinion she passed on to countless readers who when they pick up my book--if they bother--will approach it with the "knowledge" that it's all wrong.

Another reviewer who writes that she is of Indian descent, took issue with the name Trev uses to refer to the language he speaks with another Englishman who has spent many years in India. I had called it Hindustani, but the reviewer insisted that the language spoken in India is called Hindi. Well, yes, that is true today, but two hundred years ago, Englishmen in India spoke a different language when conversing with the locals--a lingua franca called Hindustani--which was a mixture of Hindi and Urdu (the language of the Mughals who still ruled large tracts of India.) This, too, was something I'd checked out before employing the phrase--but once again, what the reader knew about the present day made her assume what I'd done was wrong.

Of course it is possible, even with detailed research, that I will get some things wrong. I'm not writing for the Journal of Regency Studies, but for a reader who wants a deeply moving, passionate love story. At a certain point I have to let go of the research and follow my characters where they may lead me.

But I do want to assure those of you who do care about getting things right--and since my publisher has made a point of promoting my books as books that do get the historical details right I know you're out there--that I have done my research, quite a lot of it. So if something looks wrong, give me the benefit of the doubt, or if it really bothers you, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to explain my reasoning and listen to what you've found that might contradict it.

My Post for The Now Defunct Borders Trueromance Blog

2011-07-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

The book buying world is a lot poorer now that Borders is no more, and romance readers are even poorer because as of July 29, 2011, the Borders Trueromance blog has been shut down.

I'd been scheduled to appear on the blog to discuss Star Crossed Seduction and had already written my post, so rather than let it go to waste, I'm going to share it with you here.

Setting: London in 1820s.
Subgenre: Regency Historical Romance
Hero: Captain Miles Trevelyan, nicknamed Trev
Heroine: Temperance Smith

One sentence summary: In this Scorpio-themed book, a war-weary Cavalry officer, who is looking for a night of dalliance, rescues a beautiful pickpocket from arrest, but their casual encounter leads to a no holds barred battle of the sexes that threatens their very lives--unless they can heal their wounded hearts.

Scene you like most and would never cut: The scene that ensues when Trev, hoping to get the heroine out of his system, makes an assignation to meet her at a location she has let him believe is a brothel. It isn't.

Thing your heroine would never be caught dead doing/saying: God save the King! Temperance's whole life has been shaped by the republican ideals that brought her to London in the wake of a rabble-rousing revolutionary.

Tell us one quirky thing about your hero? Trev is fluent in several of the languages of India and has earned a reputation as being an expert in the interpretation of Sanskrit manuscripts--including the Kama Sutra.

What is your heroine’s occupation: After the death of her lover, the revolutionary, Temperance and two young girls have supported themselves by picking pockets. Their only alternative was to work for the local bawd, Mother Bristwick.

What is your hero’s occupation: Trev, who grew up in a military family, is a cavalry officer recently returned from fighting in India's Third Maratha War. But his real love is the "little jobs" he undertakes from time to time for the scheming head of India's Political and Secret Department.

What do you think readers will like best about this book: The intense battle of the sexes Temperance and Trev engage in as they pit their well-honed seductive talents against each other in a futile struggle to avoid the obsessional attraction that draws them together.

How does Star Crossed Seduction connect to Lord Lightning? Lord Hartwood and Eliza make a brief, but important appearance in this story when Eliza attempts to rescue Temperance from her chosen way of life by inviting her and her fellow pickpockets to become inmates at her new Refuge for Unfortunate Females Conducted on Strict Astrological Principles. Temperance, as you might imagine, doesn't take well to being reformed.

What’s next: My next book in the Lords of the Seventh House series, which is not linked to the first two, will be the Pisces book, Perilous Pleasures. The hero is a Scottish lord with a tragic past who has taken a vow of chastity after falling under the sway of a mysterious mystical master. I've paired him with a cynical Virgo who is the ugly daughter of a beautiful courtesan--the same courtesan the hero believes sent his sister to her death during the French Revolution.

About Me:

1. What’s your favorite kind of story to get lost in? I love long, beautifully written, complex emotionally wrenching stories where we get deep into the head of a masterful man who must go through painful growth before he can win our--and the heroine's--hearts.

2. What’s the first book you remember reading? The first picture book I remember loving was If I ran the Zoo. The first chapter book was: Mara Daughter of the Nile. Or was it Johnny Tremaine? I've always loved stories with a historical setting.

3. What would your occupation be if you were no longer a writer? If reality was no bar? Fronting a heavy metal band. But if we have to stick with the possible, the sad truth is that I've been a writer for so long I'm not fit to do anything else.

4. What do you do to unwind and relax? Read.

The Cover of Star Crossed Seduction

2011-05-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

I'm loving this cover because the characters look so much like the way they appeared in my mind's eye when I was writing their story. Temperance, the seductive pickpocket who is the heroine of Star Crossed Seduction,looks so much like what I imagined it's spooky.

Trev, my hero, is a bit harder and more mature than this cover model, as you'd expect of a man who has been on active service in a war zone in Northern India since his early teens. He's also more magnetic, dominant, and commanding. But in real life, people like Trev don't spend their time posing for artists, so I'm happy that my wonderful cover artist was able to find a model whose appearance comes so close. If you like this cover, you won't be disappointed with what's on the pages inside it.

BTW, the cover artist is the incomparable James Griffin. You can see more of his work on his blog, Paint Layers. He also did the cover for Lord Lightning. I feel so fortunate to have someone of his caliber bringing my characters to life.

In case you're wondering what The "Kiss and Teal" medallion is all about, my publisher, HarperCollins/Avon, is using the launch of its September Historical Romances to promotes Ovarian Cancer Awareness.

The logic behind this is compelling. These romances reach a million women a month--the audience that benefits most from learning about the symptoms that should send a woman to her gynecologist for further screening. HarperCollins will also be donating a goodly sum to the charity that runs the Teal Ribbon campaign for Ovarian Cancer Awareness. Because I know some people who have survived this deadly cancer I'm happy to be participating in an effort to break through the fear and silence that usually surround it.

More on Star Crossed Seduction

2011-04-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Here's the blurb I put on the bookmarks for my next romance, Star Crossed Seduction which is coming out at the end of August:

Lovers or Enemies?
Captain Miles Trevelyan, on leave from active service in India, is heading out for a night on the town when he rescues a beautiful pickpocket from arrest. She's the perfect choice for a few days of dalliance--beautiful, cunning, and completely disposable.

But Temperance has no intention of becoming the plaything of a man who wears the uniform of the solders who murdered her lover. Disarming Trev with a kiss, she escapes. But her sultry kiss opens the two Scorpio adversaries to an obsessive attraction that neither can elude--or possibly survive.
* * *
The back of the bookmark will entertain you, too, as it gives you instructions, by astrological sign, for "How to Win His Heart."

I'll send any of my American readers a Star Crossed Seduction bookmark if you mail a self-addressed stamped envelope (use a $.44 stamp)to this address:

Jenny Brown
P.O. Box 402
Turners Falls, MA 01376

Not only will you find out how to win his heart, you'll also be among the first to see the striking cover of Star Crossed Seduction (which is still embargoed by my publisher.)

Another Milestone Passed!

2011-03-02T16:01:00.000-08:00

Today I corrected the proofs for Star Crossed Seduction, also known to friends and foes alike as "The Scorpio Book."

Reading proof can be a dispiriting undertaking because by the time a book has reached the proof stage you aren't allowed to change anything substantial. So it follows, as night follows day, that the proof stage is the time where previously hidden flaws decide it is time to reveal themselves and glare balefully off the page at their hapless author.

But not this time! I'm even more enthusiastic about this book now than I was at the copyedit phase. Problems have been solved. Rough edges smoothed. And best of all, now that it's done, I will never have to read it again!

Only those of you who are fellow authors will know what a comforting thought that is. I must have read this book some seventeen times by now. Slowly and with great attention to detail.

Now all I have to do is wait and see whether you and thousands of others enjoy it. I hope you do. But at this point there is nothing more I can do to ensure that happens. It's up to Trev and Temperance, the pair of truly star crossed lovers who took over my life for a year and would not quit until I'd told their poignant story, to do that.

What's New?

2011-02-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

First off, I want to thank all of you who bought Lord Lightning. Extra special thanks go to everyone who took the time to post a review on Amazon or Goodreads.com.

My editor tells me Lord Lightning has sold well for a debut release by a hitherto unknown author, even though it came out at a time when retail book sales across the industry were under a lot of pressure and during a month when there were 31 other historical romances released at the same time.

Some of you have wondered why my publisher has set the Kindle price so high. The answer is not, as some ignorant people post online, that the publisher is greedy. Far from it. The issue is this: brick and mortar bookstores order tens of thousands of copies of Avon's paperbacks. If the download was priced much lower than the printed book readers would go to the store, look through the books, decide which ones looked interesting and then download them, leaving the printed books sitting on the shelf unsold. Those books cost the publishers a lot of money to print and ship, and if people buy the download instead of the paperback, the bookstore strips the cover, throws the book away, and the publisher has to refund the bookstore the full cost of the unsold book.

Even worse, when too many of the printed books come back from the stores as unsold returns, the next time the publisher releases a book by the same author, the stores won't stock it. Because so many shoppers--even those who download--are still looking at bookstore books to determine which books they want to buy, if the book isn't in the stores, the author's sales will plummet. So Avon and other big publishers are pricing e-books in such a way that people who find the book on a shelf are not motivated to download them instead of buying the book they hold in their hands.

Quite a few readers have been asking me what my next book will be and when it's coming out. I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that my next release is the Scorpio book, which will be out this September 28. The publisher chose the title, Star Crossed Seduction, and they've given it a cover that I think is even better than the spectacular cover of Lord Lightning.

The cover for Star Crossed Seduction is both romantic and tasteful. But what really excites me about it is that the people on this cover look exactly like the way I imagined the characters in the story would look.

I'm not allowed to show you the cover yet, but as soon as I can, it will be posted here, along with more information about the story. I can tell you that people who have read and enjoyed Star Crossed Seduction and Lord Lightning tell me that Star Crossed Seduction is the better book.

Beyond that, this month I'm wrapping up work on the third book in the Lords of the Seventh House series, which will be the Pisces book. I'll tell you more about it once my editor has had a chance to weigh in on it this spring.

RT Book Reviews Nominates Lord Lightning for Readers Choice Award!

2010-11-02T12:16:00.001-07:00

I'm delighted to announce that Lord Lightning was just picked to be one of RT Book Reviews' Reader's Choice Award Nominees as one of the "Best Historical Novels 2010."

Even better it was nominated in the "Historical K.I.S.S. Hero" category, spotlighting Lord Lightning himself, the inimitable Edward Neville.

I couldn't have asked for anything better. My hope was that readers would fall in love with Edward as deeply as I did and this nomination suggests that they have.

You might be interested to know that when the hero of Lord Lightning first showed up and informed me that his name was Edward, I was concerned. This was several years before Ms. Meyer had published Twilight and is name sounded a bit stodgy to me since the bestselling authors were writing about all those dashing Wulfs and Aidens and Blazes.

But I stuck with it because my hero insisted it was his name and because "Edward" is a real English name of the sort real English aristocrats would have given children born in the late 18th century who of course, are the people who grew up to be our Regency heroes.

Now of course, Lord Lightning's first name is fiercely trendy again, and I've even been accused of jumping on a bandwagon when, in truth, my eccentric hero got there long before that parvenue vampire boy.

Lord Lightning is Off and Running!

2010-10-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

Lord Lightning came out on September 28th, though it took another ten days or so for it to make it to shelves in bookstores around the country. It's fully stocked now, and people have spotted it in stores from New England to Hawaii and even in Canada.

Because I live out in the middle of nowhere with very few chain bookstores anywhere nearby and wanted to see my book on real life bookstore shelves I put together a contest where people could upload photos when they spotted Lord Lightning. Several lucky spotters will win prizes.

You can see the spottings--including the one by the guy wearing a kilt--on this page:

Where's Lord Lightning?

But to tell the truth, it's been nerve-wracking couple weeks as I wait to see how my brand new first novel will do in the marketplace. I finally heard from my editor this week, and she tells me that sales have been very good. That was a huge relief.

I'm also starting to get some fan mail, which is very heartening, though I'm also starting to get the occasional extremely negative review, which my friends who have a lot of books under their belts tell me is normal. Hopefully the people who love Lord Lightning will outnumber those who hate it. If you liked it, do let me know!

While waiting for news over these past weeks, I've occupied my time by posting on quite a few romance blogs whose owners were generous enough to ask me to drop by.

You can find the whole list of guest blog posts and links to the blogs where they appear on this page: Jenny Brown's Blog Tour.

Among my favorite blog appearances were two interviews. One appears at Not Another Romance Blog . Another I enjoyed greatly was hosted by the pirates over at Romance Writer's Revenge .

Christina Phillips, whose debut romance, Forbidden has the most gorgeous cover you'd ever want to see and features an intensely erotic story set in one of my favorite settings, Roman Britain, interviewed me at her blog, Christina Phillips.

Finally, fellow Avon author and friend Miranda Neville and I interviewed each other over on The Season Blog.
Miranda writes witty Regency-set historical romances that stand out from the crowd. I love the way she respects the history of the period and how she takes her stories away from those boring ballrooms and shows us nooks and crannies of the Regency world we haven't seen before. The Dangerous Viscount (Avon) is her latest. Don't miss it!

In another week it will be time for me to turn away from the exciting life of the published author and get back to what it is that published authors mostly do--which is to sit at their desks typing while the house around them deteriorates into total decrepitude since stopping to clean would interfere with the creative process.

Must the Rake Be Tamed?

2010-10-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

There’s no getting around the appeal of the bad boy hero: Dark and dangerous, the most infamous rake in England, an abandoned libertine--if you’re like me, you need only see these words on a cover blurb to reach for your wallet. While others may prefer spies or wealthy dukes, no hero interests me more than the man who, heedless of society’s strictures explores the outer limits of his sexuality.

So when I set out to write the Regency set novel that became Lord Lightning that was the kind of hero I chose to write about. The man society has nicknamed Lord Lightning in tribute to his shocking behavior has behaved so badly he is forever barred from polite society. He is famed for his cold heart and his boast that he will never give his heart to a woman for even a single moment. He is also, like most bad boy heroes, witty and devastatingly charming, exuding sexual power from every pore.

But what sets him apart from a thousand other heroes of historical romance is this: My hero really is a rake, and as Lord Lightning unfolds he continues to act like one. Unlike so many supposedly rakish heroes, he is not a very nice man pretending to be a rake. He is not misunderstood. The transgressions for which society has excluded him are real.

Nor does he instantly fall in love as soon as the heroine, the gently bred amateur astrologer, Eliza Farrell, appears on his horizon. For from it. Her confidence that his astrological chart shows him to be a man who needs to love and be loved annoys him, and he sets out at once to prove her wrong. This should be easy, as Eliza is destitute and easily lured into his bed.

It should be a simple matter to seduce and abandon her, but even her trusting response to his sexual predation does not make him fall in love with her. We are not following the usual script here at all.

It is only when Eliza gives Lord Lightning a taste of his own medicine—and behaves in ways that are not what he expects-–and shows herself as capable as he is of outrageous behavior—that he begins to find her interesting. But even then, it is a toss up whether Eliza’s astrological art will transform the notorious rake into a better man or his seductive skills that will transform her.

It’s always been a pet peeve of mine that in most rake stories the heroine falls in love with the bad boy hero and joins him in an adventure filled with forbidden, edgy sex, but by the end of the story this wild, exciting man’s love for the heroine traps them both in a conventional marriage. We find them in the sequel dwelling in their comfortable home surrounded by perfect children—living the same life the heroine would have had if she’d married a nice man who had never thumbed his nose at the rules of the society.

The author may wish us to believe this domesticated pair is still having the same kind of earth shaking sex they had when they were strangers taking bold sexual risks, but I don’t buy it. So that isn’t kind of ending you’ll find in Lord Lightning. Though the delicious man who loves to shock will, by the end of the story, find happiness with his Eliza, it won’t be because she’s turned him into a nice suburban husband.

For before Eliza can finally find happiness, she will have to accept that she loves Lord Lightning for what he has always been—in all his rakish glory—as much as she loves the “better” man he has become. And I hope that when you read Lord Lightning you will, too!
---
This post originally appeared as a guest post at The Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills.

The illustrations accompanying it are Plate 3 of Hogarth's series of paintings, "The Rake's Progress" and portraits of the infamous Lord Byron and self-dramatizing rake and dreadful husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Lord Lightning and Real Regency Astrology

2010-09-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Eliza Farrell, the heroine of my debut romance, Lord Lightning, which will be on the stands September 28, is a gently raised lady who is a direct descendant of William Lilly, England’s most famous astrologer.

Though you might be surprised to learn this, the use of astrology was very popular much during the Regency period, and among its greatest challenges was to figure out what the astrological meaning was of the new planet, Uranus, which had only just been discovered in 1789.

Not so coincidentally, this turns out to be Eliza’s biggest challenge, too. For Eliza reads the chart of an anonymous stranger and interprets it as being that of a man who was born to love, only to be told that the chart is that of a well known libertine, nicknamed Lord Lightning, who is famed for his cold heart and shocking behavior.

Sure enough, the outrageous Lord’s chart is dominated by the new planet Uranus, which stands at the very point that shows the role the person takes on the world’s stage. Can it be true Eliza wonders, that, as some speculate, Uranus causes explosive, unpredictable behavior?

It’s certainly true that, as his nickname suggests, Lord Lightning delights in shocking others. And the libertine lord does his best to shock Eliza, too, for her claim that he’s at heart a loving man infuriates him, and he sets out to prove that she’s wrong. How better to do that than to seduce and abandon her?

So Lord Lightning abducts Eliza and demands that she take the place of the mistress who left him thanks to her astrological counsel. But Eliza turns out to be just as capable of shocking behavior as is the Byronic lord. When he insists her reading of his character is wrong, she’s not going to let a little thing like Lord Lightning’s irresistible sexual allure keep her from proving she’s right.

I hope you enjoy the battle of wills that follows, in what I suspect may be the steamiest astrological lesson ever penned.

For those of you who are interested in the history of astrology, it turns out the person who first discovered the astrological effect of the new planet, Uranus, was William Blake's good friend, the water colorist John Varley.

An anecdote related by his son tells how one morning, after examining his transits, Varley predicted that some dire event associated with Uranus would occur that day.

When his house was discovered to be in flames, "He was so delighted at having discovered what the astrological effect of Uranus was," his son reported, "that he sat down while his house was burning knowing though he did that he was not insured a penny to write an account of his discovery. He had timed the catastrophe to within a few minutes."

Now that was a real astrologer!
====
Portions of the post above appeared in a guest blog post published on Petit Fours and Hot Tamales.

Why I Write Wounded Heroes

2010-08-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

I love learning about other historical periods, and I find astrology fascinating, but neither interest is what drove me to write Romance. I write Romance because romances let me work through my favorite theme: the process through which a person whose personality has been formed by the experience of betrayal learns to trust and love.

My heroes, as you will see when you read my books, are people who have very good reasons for avoiding close relationships. Lord Lightning's hero, Edward Neville, revels in the role he plays--that of a cold-hearted rake who has never let any woman get close to him. His chosen role keeps him safe from ever again experiencing the devastating betrayals that shaped his personality, and it will not be easy for him to shed the persona he's become so comfortable with.

The hero of my second novel has found a different way to avoid closeness. He's a soldier serving in India whose duties give him a plausible reason to avoid marriageable women with whom he might form a close bond.

Though these two stories are very different--Lord Lightning plays on light, theatrical Leo themes while the second book explores the much darker Scorpio archetype--both stories share one thing in common. Their heroes feel safe getting into the relationships that will transform their lives because they are so certain they have finally found someone they need not fear falling in love with.

I return to this theme over and over--even when I set out to write a different kind of story. The reason is not hard to find. It's the story of my own journey from solitude to committed partnership.

I found true love quite late in life, with a person who, on the surface, appeared so completely unlikely to become a long-term partner, that I let myself be lured out of my comfort zone. What I assumed would be nothing more than a very brief fling is going into its fifteenth year as a committed relationship. In order to make that relationship work, like my heroes, I've had to confront some serious inner demons and heal some devastating emotional wounds.

That said, neither my heroes or my heroines are autobiographical in anything but the nature of their inner journey. Their emotions may be ones with which I am very familiar--which is why I can write them in a way that will stir those who read their stories. But the fun of writing novels is that I can give them personalities far more interesting than mine.

Lord Lightning has the ability I would kill for, of being able deliver a witty riposte in real time. Like most people, my best retorts only occur to me hours after it's too late to deliver them.

Captain Trevelyan, the hero of my Scorpio book is skilled at political intrigue and has mastered the art of keeping his real thoughts and emotions completely hidden. Those who know me will understand at once why I find that fantasy so fulfilling. I'm lucky if I can hide anything that pops into my mind--or heart--for more than three minutes.

Astrological Characteristics of Romance Writers

2010-07-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, when I was mulling over which sign I wanted to focus on for my next novel, I found myself wondering about the astrological characteristics of Romance writers. Were certain signs more common on their charts?

To gather data that might answer this question, I posted a question on a discussion group frequented by published Romance writers. Rather than look at their entire chart--which would be fascinating but also extremely time consuming--I asked them to send me their Sun sign, Moon sign and the sign of their Ascendant.

These are what many astrologers consider the most significant placements on a chart (though personally I am starting to think that the position of and aspects to Moon's Nodes are just as essential.) To help them find this information, I included a link to an excellent site that computes free charts and gives a brief explanation of the meaning of each planetary placement. You can visit that link here:
Astrolabe: Free Birth Chart & Astrology Report Data Input

Thirty-four writers contributed their data. This is a small sample, but still large enough to be worth examining. There was also a "selection bias" involved. Because this data was collected via a voluntary survey people chose whether or not to participate, and it's likely people with certain kinds of personalities would be more prone to contribute data. With those caveats in mind, here's what the data showed.

At the most general level, the authors who submitted data had more chart elements in Leo than any other sign--14, followed by Capricorn-12, Pisces-11 and Sagittarius-10. At the other end of the spectrum, Gemini-4, Aquarius-4 and Taurus-4 were the most scarce.

The Sun, Moon, and Rising sign (also called the ascendant) point to different elements in personality, though, so it is worth looking at the frequency with which they occur in these individual factors.

SUN SIGNS

The Sun sign describes the central ego drive--your main motivation for action.

The most frequently reported Sun signs (5 each) were Leo and Virgo.

Finding Leo here is no surprise. Leo is associated with performing and acting, self expression and creativity. Leo is also associated with love affairs, so it makes sense that Leos would write stories about those affairs. Many Leos act out the characters they create as they write, too.

Virgo is associated with Mercury--which rules writing. Virgo is also very thorough and detail oriented and these are traits which really come in useful if you intend to write a book someone else will pay money to read.

However, the Virgo Sun can get overly analytical and consumed with trivia. I note that most of the people with Virgo Suns who have published Romances also have Moons or Rising signs in the more emotional signs that are most common among romance writers, especially Scorpio or Leo. Without some other chart influence to direct their intellectual energy towards describing emotion, the Virgo writer may prefer to use her skills for something more practical, like documenting software--which pays better.

The least frequent Sun signs reported were Taurus, Capricorn, Aries and Aquarius with 1 each. The scarcity of Taurus is interesting, as it is associated with Venus which you'd think would give an interest in love, but perhaps there's something to its reputation for being a bit lazy and too prone to seeking comfort unless there are other strong chart influences counteracting those tendencies. Writing books is hard work! The Taurus also may find love so easily she doesn't need to fantasize about it or read stories about it.

Aries is known for its short attention span. It starts out with a bang and loses interest (again unless there are other counterbalancing strong chart elements). This, too, works against finishing novels. Aries is also more interested in energetic fun sex without emotional complexity. As my favorite Aries asks, "Why do romance writers show men thinking emotional thoughts during sex scenes?" if you don't know the answer to that, you aren't going to sell the classic romance novel.

Aquarius isn't all that interested in "love stuff" and many people with Aquarius Suns find dwelling on emotion annoying. They are more interested in group enterprises and when they pair off it often isn't in a way acceptable to Romance reader expectations. Capricorn Suns may avoid expressing emotion, too, and tend to denigrate its importance. They'll marry for reasons besides emotional love--social position, wealth, security.

MOON SIGNS

The Moon describes the conditioned behavior patterns we learned in the course of our upbringing. Often it describes the way we experienced our mothers. It describes, too, how we respond emotionally to the outside world and the environment in which we will be most comfortable.

The most common Moon sign found among these authors was a surprise: Capricorn, with 6. Why is this a surprise? Because Capricorn is the most "afflicted" Moon placement--the one that finds it most difficult to operate. People with Capricorn Moons usually grow up in an environment where there is a scarcity of affection and emotional support and they learn to keep their feelings to themselves. They can be very loving, but they give without asking anything in return and may have trouble letting others know what they feel.

So it is possible that some people are drawn to write romance out of a need for more emotion and affection than they have received in childhood. Writing about romance is a safe way to learn more about emotion. A person with a Capricorn moon may be most comfortable in a private, safe, secure, lonely place--which sounds a lot like the room where many of us write. The Capricorn Moon is also a very hard worker. A longing for emotional experience combined with the ability to work very hard may be the perfect combination for getting published.

Pisces--another very difficult Moon position--came next with 5. People with Pisces moons are very happy hidden way in their offices imagining beautiful things because it can be too painful to engage with the real world which tends to overwhelm them. They can also be addictive readers. It isn't possible to be a good writer unless you have read enough books to know what good writing looks like. People with Pisces moons also have the ability to drift out into other dimensions and sometimes to channel, both skills which help when writing fiction. For someone with a Pisces moon, the phrase, "The characters came alive" is not a metaphor. The characters may become so real they threaten to draw the Pisces Moon person into their dimension and keep them there.

Scorpio Moons were next, with 4. This is yet another "afflicted moon." It feels things extremely intensely but is often misunderstood and rejected by others because of its emotional intensity and tendency to get into power games with others. This might incline someone with this placement to get involved with imaginary characters who are more likely to do exactly what they are told. Writing stories also allows the writer with a Scorpio Moon to fully explore the most intense, discomfort-causing emotions without having to deal with that push back that they get when they try to do this with real people.

LEAST COMMON MOON SIGNS

Virgo: none. The Virgo moon is very unemotional and dissects and criticizes emotion in a way that doesn't make for enjoyable romance novels unless there are a lot of counterbalancing water or fire signs elsewhere on the chart.

Cancer 1--The person with a Cancer moon is very emotional--it's the Moon's favorite sign and it functions well there. Perhaps it functions so well, it gives a person with this Moon placement little incentive to go through all the hard work it takes to create emotion on paper. The person with a Cancer Moon is more likely to bake brownies when it's time to create--Cancer Moons love to feed others (and self), though they may enjoy reading the Romance novels other people write.

Gemini 1--This is a very intellectual Moon sign and one with a short attention span. The Gemini moon isn't all that interested in emotion and is too busy running around visiting friends and family to find time to write unless something else is going on elsewhere on the chart.

RISING SIGN

The rising sign anchors the house distribution of the chart and is the most important of all three factors. The word "horoscope" actually translates from Greek to mean "Rising sign." Until the 19th century if you asked someone "What's your sign" you would probably be told their rising sign.

The Rising sign describes what the person looks like to others physically and the overall way they strike others who don't know them very well. It describes the social role the person takes on rather than the way the person feels deep within themselves (which the Sun and Moon describe better.)

The most common Rising Signs reported were Leo 6, Scorpio 5, Sagittarius 5 and Capricorn 5. The least common were Aries 1, Aquarius 1, and Gemini 0.

Sagittarius would fit the "storyteller" archetype, though its scarcity in the deeper parts of the personality probably is due to the fact that when expressed in Sun or Moon, its tendency is to create people who "love 'em and leave 'em" and who are more interested in adventures than commitment. The Sag rising sign, however, makes the person be seen an explainer, a story teller, a reader, and a traveler. This is a person who thinks deeply about things and seeks an organizing principle to make sense out of detail.

Capricorn is something of a surprise here, too, all I can think of to explain it is that people with Capricorn Rising signs work very hard and are comfortable with frustration and delay, which is a personality type that makes it possible to keep writing until you break through. Authors have to tolerate years of rejection before their books sell, and the frustration and delay doesn't stop after they find a publisher

Leo and Scorpio are more self-explanatory. Scorpios are seen as very sexy and emotionally complex and Leos are seen as entertainers and lovers, though of course, if they aren't careful, they may also come across as prima donnas or spoiled brats.

ELEMENT EMPHASIS

The signs break down into Earth, Air, Fire and Water Signs. Out of curiosity, I analyzed frequencies by elements. The distribution was pretty even except for a definite shortage of Air signs.

The Air signs are Aquarius, Libra and Gemini. Libra was the best represented, and because it is the sign of marriage and partnership and associated with Venus, you'd expect that. But Air signs are focused on thought rather than experience and the Libra way of connecting with others is more likely to be a sports team than an emotionally wrenching relationship (again, unless other strong emotional chart elements are present.)

Aquarius and Gemini just don't get it when it comes to the kind of emotional conflict that drives romance. They might have liked the old Regency Trads, especially humorous ones, filled with detail and little sex but not today's kind of passionate sensual romance.

READERS VS WRITERS?

Though all Romance writers start out as Romance readers, my guess is that the astrological characteristics of the broader audience for Romance is a bit different than what we see with these authors. Many of the authors' traits are those that incline people to write Romance and gives them the dedication it takes to get published. Readers don't need anything more than some disposable income and a love of reading.

What astrological traits would you expect to find in people who love to read Romance?

Lord Lightning's Cover Revealed!

2010-05-01T04:37:00.001-07:00

I've been having to keep this under wraps for a few months but at last I can show it in public. Here is the cover for Lord Lightning. The type will be in gold foil.

Both the hero and heroine in the story are a lot older and far more English than the characters portrayed here, but they tell me this kind of cover sells books. If it works, I'm all for it.

So what do you think? Would this charm the pennies out of your purse?

I am just finishing up reading the page proofs today which marks a period in Lord Lightning's existence. When I am finished with the proofs I will never again have to read this particular book. To put this in context, I have read through the full manuscript of this novel from start to finish fourteen times since January 2009. Much as I love it, it will be good to move on.

Why Learning to Revise Turned Me into a Published Author

2010-04-24T05:10:00.001-07:00

There are some authors who can get an idea, sit down, write it out, run a spellcheck, and publish. I'm not one of them. I've published eight books by now and every one of them has had to go through anywhere from three to five drafts before it was published.

It doesn't matter what I'm writing about. Whether it be the subject of my first sale--Louisa May Alcott's childhood--or of my latest nonfiction bestseller--blood sugar--my first drafts are ugly. So are my second.

Because what I'm doing when I write an early draft is finding out what it is I'm going to be writing about. And much of what I discover in the process which will make the final book work doesn't make it onto the page in those early drafts.

What turned me from an aspiring writer to a paid writer was a graduate seminar, Writing Biography, taught by Stephen B. Oates. Oates's biography of Abraham Lincoln, With Malice Toward None, spent months on the New York Times bestseller list in the 1970s and is still in print today, and for good reason. It reads like a novel, pulling you through the story while explaining complex political issues in ways that made them accessible and understandable.

What Oates did in that seminar that was so transformational was to make us write a 50 page seminar paper and take it through three drafts. He looked at each draft and made suggestions. I thought I knew how to revise before that, but I learned how wrong I was.

Because the changes Oates showed us how to make were NOT line edits. He didn't suggest we use more felicitous phrases or more vibrant language. What he did instead was show us how we could alter the structure of the piece or the theme around which we organized our facts.

The discovery that you might have to throw out fifty pages you thought were pretty good and start all over again with the same material was an eye-opener for me. Until then, if I managed to get fifty pages of anything written the only changes I'd make when I turned to revising was to pretty up the sentences.

But it is only when you start reworking theme and structure that revising turns into the powerful process that can turn good but not great prose into something worth reading.

When I finished the last draft of my seminar paper--the fifth, I think--Oates suggested I submit it to American Heritage, which at the time was the most prestigious market for historical pieces. I did, and they bought it for an sum that could have paid my rent for four months.

That sale changed my life, even though it never saw print. Though I got paid in full for it, my acquiring editor died shortly afterwards and the magazine's new editor changed its format so that they no longer published long pieces like mine.

But every time I looked at the living room sofa I bought with the proceeds from that sale I knew I was an author--and I also knew that it could take many drafts to get my work from what I started out with to something that would sell.

That hasn't changed no matter how many books I write, because books come to me in bits and pieces and often without the organizing principle or theme that will make them work. Only after I've written a couple hundred pages do I start to get a sense of what I'm really writing.

My novels have worked that way too. Lord Lighting sold only after I found a different climax and resolution than the one it had through its first three drafts.

And now I'm finishing up the next book in its series due in a few weeks and have just completed draft four. The story is the same story I told in draft two--with a different sequence of scenes, quite a few new scenes, and a slightly different emotional story underlying the external plot.

Everything that ended up in this draft was present in some form in the earlier drafts, but what changed is the book's structure and theme. Because in the early exploratory drafts I learned so much about my characters that it took a while to find the strands of their stories that would make the most satisfying novel.

This time my mentor through the process--and the saver of my sanity--was author Lisa Brackmann, whose brilliant debut novel Rock Paper Tiger received a starred review in last week's Publisher's Weekly. She was also featured there in a wonderful PW Talks with Lisa Brackmann which I urge you to read.

Lisa and I have been exchanging manuscripts for years and we sold our debut novels within a few months of each other. Without Lisa's encouragement I don't think I'd be a published author now. She writes with a process similar to my own as her books also gradually surface as she writes and revises many drafts.

Because she writes that way, she could read my draft and see that there was a good story buried in it, and her confidence and suggestions made it possible to go through the two more drafts which brought that story out.

When I read books by authors who are frustratingly close to publication but not quite there yet, I often see a story that would benefit from the kind of structural revisions I've learned is what it takes to make my books salable.

If you are stuck in, "You write well, but" territory, instead of revising your sentences, consider revising your plot, the sequence in which events occur, your conflicts, or even the dynamics of a character. This is a lot more work than polishing your prose, but it might just be what will turn you into a published author.

Using Real Charts to Craft Believable Characters

2010-03-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

Astrology seems to be re-emerging in genre fiction after a twenty-year sleep. This is good. What isn't quite so good is that all too often when people hear the word "astrology" they expect the bastardized version of astrology you find on the newspaper comic pages: one that reduces all people to one of twelve archetypes.

This has never been what real astrology does. Though the signs do describe archetypes, each person's chart features ten astrological planets each in its own sign, each placed in one of the twelve astrological houses, all interacting with each other in ways that make some strong, some weak, some keys to the individual's character, and some muted in their effect.

This is why real astrology describes real people, with all the conflicts, contradictions, strengths and weaknesses that real people display.

Let's look briefly at what Sun Sign Astrology might tell us about a person, and then compare it with what real astrology might say.

Sun sign astrology tells us that a person born with the sun in Leo is "proud, regal, theatrical, creative, and may have child-like traits or be heavily invested in his or her children." We all know people like that, but what you've got here is really an archetype not a description of the one twelfth of all humans alive who were born between July 23 and August 23.

Real astrology tells us a lot more about a "Leo" because it looks not only at what sign the Sun was in at birth, but also where the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were. Each planet describe a facet of personality and each may be found in a different sign.

The most important factor on a real astrological chart is NOT the sign of the Sun, it's what sign (and degree) was on the horizon at the moment of birth--that of the Ascendant. That is because the position of the Ascendant determines how the chart is divided into Houses. Houses, in turn, determine what area of life a planet (including the Sun) will express in.

A person whose Sun was in Leo might have been born before dawn, which would put their Sun in the First House. Their life would be about self expression and they'd express their creative Leo ego energy in a way that might strike others as selfish. The person with a First House Leo Sun is likely to be a Prima Donna--and that's what they're supposed to be.

Another Leo born the same day just before sunset would have their Sun located in their chart's Seventh house. Their life would be about partnership. They'd still be creative, theatrical, and childlike at heart, but they might well choose a partner to express those traits for them and stand out of the way while the partner does his or her thing. They'd have and Aquarius ascendant if born that time of day, which would make them appear to the world to be a far more objective, political, impersonal kind of person. Only those who knew the person very well would be aware that all three of this person's spouses were dramatic, childlike, creative people and realize how this "Leo" expressed the Leo archetype.

The placement of the planets besides the Sun are vital too.

The Moon moves into a new sign every two and a half days. It describes many things about a person, the most important of which is their early childhood environment, the person's perception of their mother, and what they expect from the world (which is of course conditioned by the early childhood experience.)

A Leo with an energetic, impulsive, perhaps even angry, Aries Moon will have a very different childhood and learn a very different way of interacting with the world than a person would who was born into the environment described by the oversensitive, self-sacrificing, religious or perhaps addicted or dishonest Pisces Moon, though the two individuals might have been born less than three days apart.

Add because these Moons are probably going to be placed n a different House on the chart, the complexities increase. A person with a Pisces Moon in the Tenth House might have mother who was all too well known in their home town for a drinking problem. Another Leo with a Pisces Moon placed in the Second House might have had a childhood dominated by a mother who was unable to manage her finances or who was bilked of them by a con man. These people will have very different core issues which have in common only that they make it difficult to express the creativity and warmth their Leo Sun might give them.

How well the individual's Sun and Moon relate toe each other makes a difference in personality, too. A Leo whose Aries Moon makes a pleasant Trine with that Leo Sun will tend to have parents (also represented by Sun and Moon) who get along and the person will be able to express themselves with ease because nature (Sun) and nurture (Moon) are in harmony.

The Leo with the Pisces Moon has a tougher time. These planets connect in a way that is uncomfortable, so the individual's upbringing with its undertone of confusion, deception, or sacrifice for others, may make it hard for them to feel comfortable expressing themselves in the classic confident Leo manner.

These examples barely scratch the surface, but they give you some idea of why real astrology is a wonderful tool for understanding the rich complexity of real people.

And because complex real people are the characters readers enjoy reading about the most, real astrology can help you add layers of complexity to your characters. Using a real chart will remind you that each person is a complex collection of psychological traits, some of which they express easily, some of which are blocked, and some of which are incompatible with each other.

A real chart can point you to which conflicts are most likely to be the toughest and most rewarding for your characters. Give a character a Sun Sign personality that demands they achieve a certain kind of self-expression but give them other Planets that makes it tough to express that self, and you have the beginnings of an enjoyable novel.

Using real astrology forces you away from archetypes. Your Leo who is a Prince living in a palace is boring. Give him a Capricorn Moon in the Sixth House. Now his parents are defeated by an enemy shortly after his birth and he's raised as a servant. Sprinkle in some Pisces on his chart, so that he's been deceived about who he really is. Then give him a Sagittarius Mars that propels him into a journey that will lead him to the lessons he needs to become what he feels he is inside.

Suddenly you have what looks like an interesting story--one that is character-driven--and one that uses astrology to create characters that have the mix of archetype and complexity that characterize real people.

Live on Amazon!

2010-02-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

At long last, a mere eight months since I received the offer from HarperCollins/Avon, Lord Lightning has shown up on Amazon. It's real folks!

We also have a cover. It's brilliant. But I'm not allowed to show it to you until May. This provides a completely new definition for "torture." Given my druthers I'd have already put it up on a billboard. That's how happy I am about it.

After several changes, the official publication date is September 28, 2010, which makes it an October releas.

All this is a huge thrill for me, but I will restrain myself from burbling on about it because I know all too well that I'm the only person who finds it wildly exciting. The rest of the world has far more interesting things to think about than the fate of a new novel written by an obscure novelist.

So all I'll say for now is this: Come back in March if you want to see the cover.

Regency Slang

2010-01-19T10:28:00.001-08:00

Like many of you, I fell in love with the "Regency" novel after reading the works of Georgette Heyer, the English author who invented the genre. Heyer's work is full of what readers assume is authentic Regency-period slang, and over the years, her slang has become well known to readers who have never read a single book by Heyer. That's because authors writing Regency Romances have to use bits of this slang to establish their street cred.

In a thousand novels Regency misses worry about "making a cake" of themselves in a "Cheltenam tragedy." They are "blue deviled." Heroes may have "not a feather to fly with" when their "pockets are to let" and may turn to "parson's mousetrap" to restore their fortunes. Criminals in Heyer let off volleys of near incomprehensible but robust slang, too, as they go about "the prigging lay," as do gentleman whose more controlled aggression doesn't preclude their occasionally "landing a facer."

You can find several lists of Regency Slang on the Internet. A good one is A Regency Lexicon.

But since my next book features a protagonist who has been living in the London slums, I decided it was time to hit the primary source material to see what I could find to give my character's speech an air of authenticity that was not cribbed out of Heyer. I'll take any excuse to do primary research (and avoid writing!) So off I went.

The fact is, I have always been a bit suspicious of Heyer's use of slang. No other books or periodicals published in the period she writes about use any of the slang she employs, except for Pierce Egan, a journalist who made a pretty penny out of publishing slumming narratives--the best known is Life in London. When those books became bestsellers, he published an updated version of, Grose's Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue, a compendium of slang and cant originally published in the 18th century.

Heyer's debt to Egan was very large, but I always wondered how much of the slang in Egan's book would have been used in real life. By the time any slang word hits print it's out of date, and when middle aged people from the suburbs like Egan start using subcultural slang, you know that the subculture itself has long since dropped it.

To prepare myself for my venture into slang, I started out reading Dickens' Oliver Twist. Dickens is out of my period, but I wanted to get a feeling for how the street language was used in sentences. Dictionaries don't give you that, and it's important when using slang to see it in context. It doesn't help to know that "far out" was 1960s hippie slang for "excellent" if you use it in a sentence like "Can I interest you, my dear, in a slice of this far out tiramisu."

Using slang correctly requires that you not only know what the word means, but what kind of person would use it in what kind of a sentence, and when. Slang expires faster than a gift card from a merchant about to go bankrupt.

Google Books Search makes it easy to read all kinds of primary source material that just a decade ago could only have been read by those who had the money to buy rare old books or who put in weeks traveling to distant college libraries. So I was able to find several books of slang from my period besides the Pierce Egan version of Grose's dictionary, and moreover, I was able to read the criticism of other authors about Egan's dictionary that confirmed some of my suspicions.

His critics claim that Grose padded his work with obsolete terms that had never been used in common speech, terms that appeared once in a book before vanishing without a trace. They also said Egan mixed up old slang collected by Grose with contemporary 1820s words in a very confusing way. This may explain why so many of the "Regency" phrases readers have come to know and love thanks to Heyer appear nowhere else but in her works.

But I also ran into another interesting phenomenon. I knew from reading the biography of Heyer's written by Jane Aiken Hodge, that as her fame grew and she attracted imitators, Heyer became increasingly annoyed at how others plagiarized her books. To get back at them she started putting in invented details and language, so that when she found them in other author's work she could prove those authors were plagiarizing her.

In the course of my research I noticed something else that may be related to this. Heyer appears in several cases to have used a phrase found in an 1820s slang dictionary giving it the reverse meaning to what you find in the dictionary definition. The first time I found one of these dictionary definitions that were the opposite of what Heyer used the word for, I thought maybe Heyer had just got it wrong. The second one made me think she was doing it on purpose.

No I'm not going to tell you what those phrases were, though one was one that is very common in today's Regency novel. You'll have to do your own research for that, but since it is great fun reading old slang dictionaries, that is something to look forward to.

The other thing that I learned after putting several days into this effort was what a great job Heyer did at finding the very few slang terms and phrases in these dictionaries that don't sound downright peculiar when used in a sentence. She found almost all of them that, for one reason or other, give off a rich odor of Regency authenticity. Most real Regency slang words sounds like they are part of a foreign language and it would be almost impossible to use them in a sentence in such a way that the reader could understand them without providing a long and distracting explanation.

Few of the authentic terms are linguistically interesting or have a nice sound. Very few feel "19th century", and oddly some sound so modern you can't use them in a historical novel, like "kid" as in "Here's to you kid" or "crib" meaning place you live. Heyer found the words that do have a nice sound, are easy to interpret, and give off a nice historical aroma. Wisely she left the rest behind.

If she invented a few of these slang terms or phrases, well good for her. I'm pretty sure she did. She also picked up a certain amount language that came from the late Victorian period, just as she imposed dance cards on the Regency period, though they are a late Victorian invention which were still in use in the 1920s when she started writing.

Note: The only reason you will read that dance cards were invented in the early 19th century is because Heyer made everyone think they were. No one has ever been able to find an early 19th century dance card to substantiate the claim, though there are many late Victorian ones around.

NOTE: The book that embodies what I learned about real Regency slang is is Star Crossed Seduction. It and will be released on August 30, 2011. You can pre-order it using the links you'll find in the column to your right.

A False Deluding Young Man

2010-01-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Steeleye Span's wonderful version of a traditional ballad, All Around My Hat, today and for some reason the lyrics really leapt out at me, reminding me of the chasm that looms between you, me, and all the women who lived in the time periods we historical novelists like to write about.

This chasm involves the way we now perceive virginity.

The lyric in question is this:

Other night he brought me a fine diamond ring
But he thought to have deprived me of a far better thing
But I being careful like lovers ought to be
He's a false deluding young man let him go farewell he

The premise of the song is one you will rarely see explored in a mainstream romance today outside of the Christian market, for the modern reader no longer views virginity as a precious possession.

But the need to preserve virginity dominated the lives of all women world-wide until the 1960s. It still dominates that of the majority of women living in traditional societies around the world. It does so for the reason that any woman who has sex in a culture that does not give her access to reliable birth control is almost certain to become pregnant. Marriage is the way that traditional cultures provide for children, since these cultures rarely allow women to earn enough money to support children on their own. So in traditional cultures, a pregnancy that takes place outside of marriage is an economic threat--someone will have to pay to raise that child--usually the community. So society attempts to prevent unwed pregnancy from occurring by treating it with fear, censure, and shame.

Traditional cultures are also dominated by the double standard, which was still very much alive in my childhood. They do not blame men for attempting to seduce young women, but shame and shun unmarried women who fall for male wiles.

The invention of the birth control pill, which unlike earlier forms of contraception, worked, changed this within the blink of an eye. The cultural expectations that women would stay "pure" lingered on for a decade or two in the more traditional segments of society--but when women realized they could have sex safely and without "paying for it" our overall cultural expectations changed in ways that won't go away.

But when we modern women write Romances set in the world where there is no effective birth control we face a challenge. To relate to way our modern readers' expectations we have to completely disrespect the reality faced by the women we are supposed to be writing about.

Our readers want our characters to have sex, lots of it. And that's what they get, but the only way we can do this is by completely ignoring what sex meant to people in the Regency or Victorian era.

A properly raised virgin in the Regency or Victorian period who had sex with a man she wasn't married to was either a) making an extreme political statement, b) ignorant of what she was actually doing (which happened more than you'd think since women were given no sex education until the eve of their marriage, and sometimes not even then.) c) drunk or drugged, or d) mentally abnormal.

Editors and agents tell us we have to ignore all this to sell books, and we do. But the recent trend, which makes the loss of virginity a nonissue for our historical heroines the way it is for today's teens, drains away rich sources of conflict that could provide emotionally compelling stories that readers might prize.

When we create a heroine whose decision to have sex outside marriage is a radical act with frightening implications, we raise the stakes. If you don't think this can be done in a way that will move the modern reader, go reread Laura Kinsale's Flowers from The Storm.

My characters do have sex--and sexual tension drives my plots, but my heroines are rebels. They know their willingness to give themselves to a man outside of marriage is a heroic act, courageous or foolish, but never routine.

I'd love to put the narrator of "All Around My Hat" into a story--a woman who fights her own heart to withstand the advances of a man who as much as she loves him, shows her through his willingness to seduce her that he isn't worthy of her.

What do you think?

Empathy Works Against Comedy

2009-12-29T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the revisions for Lord Lightning and in the process I'm getting a bit more insight into what distinguishes comedy from drama.

It turns out to have a lot to do with how much insight the author gives us into the characters' motivations.

Take for example Austen's brilliantly funny character Lady Catherine De Burgh. All Austen shows us about her is what we would see observing her from the outside: what she says and how she treats people. These become very funny at times, for example when she meddles in Charlotte's housekeeping, or explains that her daughter would have been a wonderful pianist if she had only taken up the instrument. And of course she's extremely comic when she confronts Elizabeth and insists that her engagement is impossible since Darcy is engaged to her daughter, leading Elizabeth to ask why, if it is impossible Lady Catherine has made a long journey to demand she give up that very same engagement.

But look what happens if we take the identical character and tell the same story writing from deep within Lady Catherine's point of view, which provides the reader with far more information that reveals why she acts the way she does.

For example, if we saw Lady Catherine's meddling from her point of view we might learn that when she was a child no one ever gave her any advice and as a result she made a very poor choice of husband that ruined her life. Her meddling is meant to help others--she sees others as being continually on the brink of making dangerous mistakes. That they don't understand this makes her sad, but she can't give up.

Narrate the scene with the piano in her POV and as she looks at her sickly daughter let the reader learn that her husband turned out to have syphilis. She is terrified that her daughter's sickliness is the result and blames herself for her condition. The dream world she has created about her daughter's abilities is an attempt to drown out her fears.

And her obsession with her daughter marrying Darcy? Stay in her POV and let the reader learn that she wants to protect her daughter from marrying someone dangerous, as she did, and the only way she can think of to do this is to marry her someone she can completely trust--her nephew, Darcy.

Were we to experience these scenes this way, Lady Catherine would no longer be funny because the reader would understand her motivations in a way that creates empathy. Then Lady Catherine's self-delusion, meddling, and matchmaking are no longer comic, but depending on how the author spins them, might be tragic or ironic.

The POV convention used in today's romance novel is the deep third person POV that takes us deep into the characters' personalities and builds empathy with them. That's important because we want our readers to fully enjoy the romance. But if you want your readers to laugh at characters, you have to step back from them and avoid those deep points of view. The less your reader knows about why the character is doing what they do, the funnier that character will be.

The Omniscient POV that Austen uses so masterfully is very well suited for comedy, as is the entire medium of film where we are always outside of the character judging them only from what they do or say, or what others say about them. Blending comedy and empathy, which is what I've tried to do in Lord Lightning is challenging. I start my readers out laughing and by the end, they are, I hope, feeling the emotions that my characters feel. Doing that turns out to be all about just how deeply I take my reader into their POV.

Research: Tom Brady in a Wet T-Shirt

2009-12-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

One of the toughest challenges we face when we write love stories is coming up with heros who excite our readers. Those making movies or TV have only to find someone who looks and sounds the right way to get the ladies slavering.

After all, when you can show your audience someone who looks like what you see above, it almost doesn't matter what story you put around him.

But when we write stories we have to make readers feel that kind of zing using only what our hero says, does, and thinks and what other characters can put into words about their perceptions of the hero.

This would appear to place us at a disadvantage, but it could be argued that if we do our job properly, the heroes we construct are more satisfying to us, emotionally, than are those pretty boys we see in films.

That's because when we read about them we engage with them so much more deeply. We know what they're thinking. We know what emotions they experience and how intensely they they experience them. We know how they think about their past and how they dream about their future. Movies rarely show us that.

What, after all, is Mr Firth really thinking in this photo? Does his soul resonate with the intensity we imagine him having, or is it just a trick of the light? Is he brooding about his wounded heart or fighting an attack of dyspepsia? Could the pain he so obviously feels be due to the poor performance of his stock portfolio? With the image, we never find out. In a romance, because we learn so much about the hero's inner life, we do.

Still, once we have written our hero and made him think and behave in ways that render him irresistible to our readers, we do have to put some work into conveying what he looks like. When we do, we have to struggle mightily to avoid cliches. Craggy brows, high cheekbones, and hair as black as ravens' wings do not distinguish our hero from all the other aspirants to the hero's crown.

So what does? In an attempt to answer that I turn to Google Images and hunt up photos of attractive men. Then I challenge myself to see if I can describe their faces or physiques without using any of the standard cliches.

Amid my researches I went looking for images to help me describe the Cavalry Officer hero of my WIP. Given how fit such a man must be I turned for inspiration to that modern warrior, Tom Brady and I did not come away empty handed. Peyton may be having a better year, but he will never look this hot!

How useful this particular research technique will be, only my eventual readers will be able to tell me. Meanwhile, as print-outs of hunks come to adorn every free surface of my office, the World's Nicest Man has suddenly adopted a new fitness regimen and is working very hard on his pecs.

There are days when it is really a lot of fun to be a writer of Romance!

What is the Seventh House?

2009-12-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

"Lords of the Seventh House" is the title of this blog. It may also end up being the title of the series of romances I will be publishing with Avon. The words have a nice ring to them. Everyone loves a lord, and the phrase, "The Seventh House," has an archetypal feel. But what does "Lords of the Seventh House" actually mean?

The phrase is one that comes from traditional astrology, which is the kind of astrology the heroine of my first book, Eliza Farrell, uses. Eliza is a descendant of William Lilly, England's most famous astrologer, so she naturally draws heavily on the techniques and terminology described in his landmark book, Christian Astrology. Christian Astrology was first published in 1647 and has remained in print ever since.

The term "House" as it is applied to a chart goes back to the ancient Greeks. It is the term used to describe each of the twelve segments into which the astrological chart divides the sky. Houses Seven through Twelve represent the portion of the sky that is above the horizon at the time and place for which a chart is cast.

The Seventh House itself represents the section of the sky that is closest to the western horizon--the place where the sun, moon and planets set.

Charts can be drawn up to investigate the nature of anything that can be defined with a place or a time. When a chart is drawn up for a person using that person's time and place of birth, each house on the birth chart describes how specific areas of the person's personality and life experience will play out.

The First House on our charts, for example, describes the way we assert ourselves in the world as well as the personality we show the world--a personality that may be harmonious with, or greatly at odds with, how we feel inside depending on other planetary placements.

The Second House describes our relationship with our material obsessions and more broadly what kinds of things we value. The Third House describes how we communicate with our immediate environment and those in it, including the siblings whose presence or absence in our immediate environment is so decisive in early life.

The Seventh House is where we look to find out information about the people with whom we form important, long-lasting connections. The Seventh House has become known as the House of Marriage because for most of us marriage is the most important partnership we will ever form.

But it's worth pointing out that the Seventh House is emphatically not the house of Love. The brief fling falls into the purview of the Fifth House, which is traditionally associated with, among other things, play, gambling, and love affairs. Astrology knows that marriage is not always or even mostly about love but is, instead, about functioning together as a unit in the eyes of the world.

When planets are found in the portion of the sky mapped by a specific house they color how the affairs of that house will play out. If Mars is in the Seventh House of a birth chart, anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with astrological theory will expect that the person's marriage will be energetic, sexualized, self absorbed, perhaps, and prone to flare up in dramatic quarrels. A person with Mars in the Seventh House is likely to be attracted either to a partner who has a strong Mars on their natal chart, or who is experienced by the chart's owner as having Mars-like characteristics: a strong sense of self, impetuosity, a taste for combat.

But what if, as so often happens, there are no planets in the Seventh House? It is then that Traditional Western Astrology comes to our aid, because it interprets houses by looking at the planet that rules that house--its "Lord" in Lilly's parlance.

Finding the ruler of a house is easy. When a chart is drawn up, each a specific degree of a sign is placed on the cusp or boundary of every house in the chart. Each sign, in turn, is ruled by a specific planet. If you understand the strength and chart placement of that planet, you can learn a great deal about the house it rules--though this is a BIG "if."

If the planet that rules the house is in a sign where it expresses its energy easily and if it makes harmonious aspects to other planets, the affairs of the house will unfold effortlessly. If the planet is placed in a sign where its energies are hindered or if it makes harsh square aspects to other planets they will present challenges.

Traditional astrologers evaluate that planet's strength using a highly complex set of rules that have been passed down and elaborated on by astrologers starting back in the days of the ancient Romans.

I have been having a great time this past year delving into traditional astrological techniques that have once again become fashionable in modern astrology over the past decade,and applying them to the charts I study--including those of the protagonists in my novels. I've found these traditional techniques extremely helpful as I go about writing the second book in my series.

I use real charts for my protagonists--a process I'll describe in a future post. The lovers in my second novel turned out to be two people with Scorpio Suns because it is standard astrological belief that Scorpios are happiest mated with other Scorpios. When I came up with charts that fit them, both of the lovers turned out to have Seventh Houses packed with planets.

This sent me back to studying the traditional meaning of the Seventh House. One thing that emerged was that in traditional astrology, while the Seventh House is indeed the House of Marriage, it is also the house that describes a person's enemies.

A person with a strong Seventh House filled with conflicting planets like those of my protagonists has a choice. They can engage the important people in their lives as partners or they can turn them into enemies. Couple this insight with the naturally suspicious nature of the person with a Scorpio Sun and their tendency to keep their real self hidden, and the conflict described by my protagonists' packed Seventh Houses began to emerge.

Can they trust each other enough to become partners or will these two passionate Scorpios end up as enemies? That is the dynamic that is driving the storyline of my second novel.

In Praise of Mrs. Oliphant

2009-11-19T08:29:00.001-08:00

Imagine if there was a Victorian novelist as skilled as Dickens whose works were completely unknown. Guess what, there is!

Her names is Mrs. Oliphant. She lived a life of unparalleled frustration and tragedy and throughout it supported herself, her son, and a gaggle of parasitic relatives with her pen. You can read a brief biography of her HERE. Unfortunately, her only biographers are scholars and their books are not easy to find.

Literary scholars decided long ago that Oliphant's works were too "popular" and sloppily written. I find it hard to understand why, because I found her novel, Kirsteen, a sheer delight. In fact, it kept me up turning pages way past my bedtime. Dickens and Thackaray never did that for me.

Kirsteen was published in 1888 but caught my interest because it is, in fact, a Regency novel set in Scotland and London in a period that starts in 1814 and ends in the early 1820s.

I picked it up because figured someone who was born in 1828 as Oliphant had been would have had enough contact, growing up, with people who had lived through the Regency period to be able to give us the telling details missing in works that depend on dry scholarship or male written texts. I hoped too that she'd provide new insight into the emotional climate of the period.

And does she!

Just as we write Regencies filtered through our 21st century values, Oliphant writes her Regency-set historical novel with the outlook of a Victorian. But she is not a male Victorian. She's a woman, and most importantly a single woman who was a breadwinner, whose marriage stunk, whose family disregarded her Victorian-approved sacrifices, and whose life span encompassed the shift from Regency values to those we now call "modern."

Kirsteen, then, is a novel that explores the psychology of women raised with traditional, Regency values from the perspective of a woman who lived by those values, suffered from them, and presents us with a book that teaches us what it took for a woman raised that way to survive.

Unlike the novels that have become required reading in Feminist Studies courses, Kirsteen makes its points subtly, in a way that a speed reader reading for plot might not even notice, but which leaps out at you once you start paying attention.

The story describes the family life of a beautiful Scottish redhead whose family is obsessed with the fact that its head is the traditional head of their clan, though their family lost their land and wealth in the Jacobite rebellion. The father has managed to buy back a small holding with his earnings as a West Indies slave driver. That gives you some hint as to the kind of family life you are about to explore, though since these are Scots everything is happening behind passive exteriors and nobody ever says a word about what they are feeling.

We have some real Scots in our extended family, and I have to say, the portrait of the emotional style seems pretty true to life.

Kirsteen, the heroine, gets into a situation where she is pressured to marry a pleasant older man. The marriage will provide benefits for everyone in the family, including herself. But she has secretly troth plighted herself to a soldier and cannot accept.

This forces her into an independent life in London. I won't give away the rest of the plot, because the way the plot develops is a large part of the pleasure of reading this book. All I can say is that you will not get a HEA. Instead you get something equally fine: a lesson in why HEA is only one of many satisfying possibilities for a woman's life.

For those of us who collect small details of daily life in our period, Kirsteen is a treasure trove of information about early 19th century life in Scotland, though one that confirms my sense that the passionate emotionally expressive Scottish hero is very much a fantasy that could only flourish somewhere devoid of real, culturally intact Scots.

As to why Mrs. Oliphant is so unknown, my guess is that she dropped out of the canon because she is so very much a woman writing for women. Her sensitive nuanced descriptions of women's inner life were dismissed as "sentimental" while Dickens and Thackaray's unrealistic female puppets still make the cut.

I found Kirsteen far more readable than Dickens and I must admit Oliphant managed to bring a tear to my eye. If that means she is a "sentimental" author then so be it. Since I read fiction to explore emotional states, it worked for me.

Have We Got Stuck in a Rut?

2009-10-17T11:34:00.001-07:00

I've just finished reading some novels written in the 1980s by Eva Ibbotson. I learned about her work on the All About Romance forum, which is a place where readers discuss their favorite romances.

I'm finding her work delightful--far more delightful, I have to confess than the current crop of romances I've been reading. They are historical novels with strong romance elements. But what makes them so pleasurable for me is that they break every rule that we modern day romance writers have been told we have to follow to please our audience.

1. Ibbotson uses several two points of view (POV) in her novels which you will no longer find employed in today's romances. One is the omniscient POV where the narrative voice is the voice of the author.

Austen wrote in that voice. P.G. Wodehouse wrote in that voice. It is a voice that lends itself to humor and word play. It works best for comedies of manners or any other kind of story where we don't need to get deeply into the emotions of the major characters. But Austen shows us it can be used to tell an emotionally moving story too. No one would ding Pride and Prejudice because it isn't written in a deep third POV that switches back and forth between Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. In fact, P&P would be less entertaining if Austen, the narrator, didn't play the part she plays in telling the story.

Reading Ibbotson's hilarious Magic Flutes (recently reissued as The Reluctant Heiress) made me yearn to write a book in this wonderful, ironic POV. But its unlikely any Romance editor today would allow it.

Magic Flutes is being reissued, ridiculously, as a YA title, probably because it doesn't have hot sex scenes, though its humor and subject matter would be much more likely to appeal to an educated older woman with wide cultural interests and enough experience in life to recognize the targets of Ibbotson's wit.

Ibbotson's Madensky Square was written in the first person POV. She uses that voice to tell a story of a group of inter-related characters in a foreign culture in a way that reminded me very much of Maeve Binchy's best novels--the ones written before she descended to writing sickeningly sweet sentimentality.

Madensky Square is not a romance, though there are love stories in it. Still, the technique of using a first person narrator who functions much like an omniscient narrator while having her own, moving emotional story to tell really intrigued me.

Bottom line: I came away from reading these books thinking that whoever decided ALL romances have to be written in Deep Third Person POV with the POV ping ponging from heroine to hero and back again should be shot.

2. Common wisdom is that you can only sell historicals today if they are set in a time and place the even the most ignorant reader is familiar with. Hence we have book after book about Henry the Eighth [yawn], or set in the Regency, a period which, as much as I used to love it, has become a bit like a wonderful little town in Tuscany that is now so crowded with tour busses you would no longer want to go there. (My next book is set in the years just following the end of the Regency for that reason.)

Ibbotson sets several of her best stories in a historical time and place that was completely new to me: early 20th century Vienna. She brings a completely alien, unknown world alive for her readers to where you end up feeling when you put down the book as if you just took a brief but illuminating vacation somewhere new, exciting and completely undiscovered.

How I would love to read more romances set in new times and places, written by people who have their facts straight and who tells stories that make their historical period come alive.

Unfortunately, Romance has moved in the exact opposite direction with editors wanting stories where heroines behave in ways that would be believable in modern New Jersey, but not 19th Century England. Gently bred virgins jump in bed with handsome men, just because they're sexy. The exquisite sense of propriety which defined that time period for more than a century is forgotten, and the reader who longs for a historical romance finds a modern romance in fancy dress, which is something else entirely.

3. Ibbotson's heros and heroines do not go through wrenching emotional journeys. They do not deal with abuse. They do not suffer intense but highly predictable Dark Moments three quarters of the way through the book. Even so, we end up with a satisfying love story.

Several of her stories turn on Rival themes. The hero is engaged to a woman who is the kind of women other women love to hate. Beautiful. Vain. Materialistic. They kick small dogs and are mean to children. The hero has idealized him, but over the course of the story the scales fall off his eyes and he sees that he has made a huge mistake. The heroine, of course, is all that the Rival is not. Eventually the Rival gets what's coming to her and the heroine gets her man.

It's not noble, but I have to admit, this kind of story can be very fun to read. I also have to admit, I've gotten to the point where all too often I can predict ever single thing that is going to happen in a conventional romance because editors and agents are so wedded to a certain form that no one can publish romances that wander from it.

4. Ibbotson's stories do not focus obsessively on the hero, heroine, and their sexual tension. In fact, they are remarkably devoid of sex and yet great fun to read.

In the place of sexual tension we find richly developed settings and characters. We learn the intriguing details of the environment in which her characters operate. In A Countess Below Stairs we learn all about the "below stairs" world of servants in a large estate. In Magic Flutes/The Reluctant Heiress we learn about what it is like back stage in an Opera company that is filled with wonderfully drawn characters whose peculiarities are both hilarious and believable. In Madensky Square we learn what it is like to be a dressmaker in 1911. In all these stories we meet strongly painted supporting characters who stay in our minds after we put down the books because their characters are so skillfully developed.

In short, her external plot is stronger than the internal plot, something forbidden tho those of us writing in today's romance genre, but something that Ibbotson proves can, in the hands of a skilled writer, provide a delightful, entertaining reading experience.

Of course, the explanation for why we don't see books like this anymore may be that there are very few people writing today who have the writing skill Ibbotson has. That may be why the genre, which now demands that its practitioners crank out a book ever 3 to 6 months, avoid the kinds of books she writes, because written too quickly by writers who don't have her level of talent, the result might be unreadable.

What do you think? Do you long for something just a bit different in the books you buy when you are looking for Romance?

Discipline

2009-09-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a post about what it takes to write a book on deadline, though discipline certainly plays a part. I wouldn't dare write about that topic until I've finished my next manuscript. Instead, the discipline I refer to is the book, Discipline, written by Mary Brunton and published in 1815.

Discipline was very popular in its day. Jane Austen made fun of Brunton's first book, Self-Control, for its improbable plot saying, "I do not know whether Laura's passage down her American River is not the most natural, possible, everyday thing she ever does." But Self-Control was a bestseller.

Discipline was Brunton's second book and unlike her first, it takes place in a world much closer to that of our Regency novels, at least for the first half which, I must admit here is all of the book I could get through.

Because unlike some other treasures rescued from obscurity, Discipline is one of those novels whose appeal is not timeless--whose appeal, is in fact entirely lacking, even for a devoted student of the period. After fruitlessly hunting for little tidbits about daily life she can work into her own prose the Devoted Student is very likely to toss it away as a lost cause.

But that isn't really fair to the book. Discipline is full of little touches that teach us not about the material details of life in her day but its psychological texture. It is just that none of what it tells us about that psychology is useful to the modern novelist writing stories set in the Regency, because Brunton's effect on the modern reader is to remind us how fundamentally alien the world of the Regency was, psychologically, to us here now and how utterly off the mark we are when we imagine the Regency Shared World we so love.

Piety underlies Brunton's work, indeed her tone seemed to me to be what we generally consider "Victorian" as it is dominated by a deep belief that we must strive to overcome innate vices and become better people because at any moment we might die and when we do we face a stern judge and a terrifying possibility of punishment.

This separates her definitively from most of us here in the 21st century who live in a world where most of the time we can ignore the precariousness of life and live as if we will all live forever, or at least will if we eat right, hit the gym, and take the right supplements. In our world, when someone young dies, we greet the event with shock, dismay and even horror. In Brunton's such a death was exactly what you would expect and provided an opportunity to rededicate oneself to the hard work needed to prepare for one's own sudden call to heaven. Even though this is a Christian perspective, it is very different in feel from the way today's Christians would write. Brunton would have looked with horror on prosperity ministries. Her good Christians are largely poor Christians and this is not accidental.

Brunton died in childbirth at the age of 40, three years after publishing her second novel. Knowing this, we can conclude that her world view with its focus on preparing for death was not a morbid obsession but a realistic assessment, especially for a woman.

Jane Austen's letters are filled with references to death in childbirth, explicit and veiled, but unlike the case in Brunton's book where deaths abound, young people don't die in the world Austen created. Even on her own death bed, Austen entertained herself making fun of the day's real estate developers in the unfinished Sanditon, rather than meditating on her sins or urging her reader to learn from her mistakes--the basic theme of the story told by the narrator of Discipline.

Reading Brunton is tough. She sets her story among the ballrooms and parlors of the wealthy. Her heiress heroine is betrayed by a money-grubbing sprig of the nobility. But that storyline is almost obscured by the sermonizing that accompanies it.

Still, I wonder sometimes if books like this one better reflect the real feelings the people who inhabited an Age rather than those that are timeless. Brunton's obsessional spiritual perfectionism is evident in diaries written by non-literary women who lived in the same time period. Her self-examination is characteristic of the writings of most women until the late 19th century. It was then that massive public health projects and a growing understanding of germ theory started whittling down the horrifying death rate that the world had taken for granted up until then.

I love the fantasy today's novelists have created and set in the English Regency period. But as a student of human life, I think it helps to remember every now and then that in 1815 marriage, to no matter how romantic a Duke, brought with it the likelihood of experiencing anywhere from 10 to 23 life threatening pregnancies unless one's husband succumbed young--Clara Schumann had a mere 7 children before her husband died in her early 30s. Of those children one must expect one in three to die young, perhaps more.

The mind set of a person living in that kind of environment is impossible for us to recover. Obviously, people dealt with it different ways: By drinking themselves insensible and gambling as if there was no tomorrow--as well there might not be, by constructing elaborate mental defenses rich in wit, or like Brunton, by attempting to prepare for the inevitable in a way shaped by the religious beliefs of the time.

The ladies waltzing at Almack's probably read, and enjoyed, Discipline. After doing so, some may have questioned the frivolity of their life and spent a moment at least pledging to do better. That would have pleased Mary Brunton, though she probably reminded herself, pride goeth before a fall. One wonders what she would make of our day's novels set in Regency high society.

Invented or True? When Imagination Hits on Something Real

2009-09-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

As I work on my next novel something really strange keeps happening. I'll invent something, start researching, and discover that the thing I invented, even if it sounds far-fetched, is grounded in reality.

I made up one character and gave him a job title, only to read in an obscure history book about someone just like him--with a very similar job title. This occurred in a context I had never researched before, so it wasn't that I'd learned about him in the past and forgot it.

Then I came up with an idea that could provide a nice way of resolving an important exterior plot point. The only problem was that for it to work the astrological charts of two historical personages would have to fit some very narrow parameters--down to the times of day they were born. I figured if they didn't, since I was writing a novel, I'd just glide over the astrology part and tell the story.

Except that when I found the personages' birth data it turned out both of them were born exactly at the time of day when they'd have to be born for my plot device to be true.

It's all very strange. Almost as strange as the feeling many writers report that their characters are real and that they tell us their stories rather than being artificial constructs we invent to tell stories we want to tell.

Have you had the experience of making up something out of thin air that turns out to be something that really happened to a real person you knew nothing about?

What My Typewriter Taught Me About Revising

2009-08-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

Years ago when I got serious about writing, back before computers were something an ordinary person could own, I bought an electric typewriter. It cost $100 used, which was a lot of money. My monthly rent for the three bedroom apartment in a small depressed mill town where I did my writing was also $100.

I did a lot of writing on that typewriter, including the piece that became my first sale. It was a long biographical sketch of Louisa May Alcott's childhood which I sold to American Heritage. Unfortunately, the editor who purchased it died shortly after the sale, and that piece never saw print--though, rather miraculously, I did get paid in full for it.

Typing my manuscripts on that venerable machine taught me a valuable lesson I frequently forget now that I have computer. When I was done typing up something new, I'd often go over it and revise, writing my revisions in pen or pencil in the spaces between the lines. Invariably, when I went back to the piece the next day, I'd note that the revisions I'd made at the end of my writing session had weakened the writing. Since the original was still there, this was not a serious problem. I just ignored the revisions and stuck with the typescript.

But then the computer came in and made it easy to revise away the first draft simultaneously with writing it. Those revisions left no trace of the original behind.

Now, knowing that revisions can weaken my writing, I do my best to keep earlier drafts and compare them to revisions to make sure I haven't drained the life out of the piece. But it's a constant struggle.

One way I fight this tendency is now is that I write my first drafts using a simple writing device called the AlphaSmart. I learned about this device from other writers who recommended it on one of the RWA discussion loops years ago. I have written several books on it since.

The AlphaSmart's interface is so clunky it is difficult to do anything on it but straight ahead typing. It weighs almost nothing, so I can curl up in bed with it, snuggle into my pillows, close my eyes and start reporting on the scenes that fill my imagination. When I'm done I plug it into a USB cable and upload whatever I've typed into a text file or Word. It runs on 3 AA batteries which will usually last me about four months with daily use.

The AlphaSmart helps avoid the revision demon, but only for the first draft. I learned a vital lesson last year when I pulled up what I thought was a current draft of one of my novels and got to work on it, only to realize a few chapters later that what I'd been working on was not the current draft, but an older one. When I went back to look at what had been my real current draft, I was struck by how much better the earlier draft was. The writing in the older version was spare and to the point. The earlier revision I had done to it had added lots of words, phrases and descriptions that slowed down the reader.

This past winter, when I revised the version of Lord Lighting I just sold, mostly what I did was take out the extra words and scenes I'd put in in previous revisions. I cut a good 7,000 words out of the manuscript and it was a lot better for it.

So now that I'm working on the first draft of my next book, I'm giving a lot of thought to how to restrain myself from what I am starting to think of as "destructive revision." I've gone so far as to contemplate writing my second draft the way I wrote drafts in the bad old days--typing the whole thing in from scratch while reading the printed version of the first draft.

I'm not sure I'll go that far. Human fingers can only take so much and after a lifetime of typing mine have a tendency to protest when I type for 5 hours straight every day. Still, I'm going to do what I can to keep myself from adding anything but the words and phrases that have to be added to make the story make sense, to set the scene more clearly, or to strengthen the dialogue or character motivation.

It's a balancing act--in my revisions last winter I did add a couple paragraphs to the beginning of Lord Lightning that made the difference between the query bouncing back unread, as had happened in the past, and my getting four requests for the full manuscript from top agents. Sometimes something is missing and putting it in makes the book better. But if nothing else, I'm going to keep my early drafts, and check back from time to time to make sure that my revisions have made the work better, not worse.

I'll also wait before revising. The most destructive revisions, in my experience, are those I make when I'm soaked in the work and haven't taken a bit of time to step back and get to where I can read what is on the page, not what I think I've written.

What do you do to prevent destructive revisions from draining the life out of your work?

What Keeps Us Turning The Pages?

2009-08-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made my way through all 700 pages of Vanity Fair. The more I read the more I remembered why it was one of my least favorite Victorian novels.

The critical edition I was reading included several contemporary reviews and modern appraisals, and I was fascinated to read that my suspicions about what Thackeray's portrait of Amelia revealed about him was true: Amelia's character, was indeed based on that of his poor wife who became mad. And that is why he paints her so affectionately and so sentimentally, and ultimately, why she is one of the least engaging characters in the book.

The idea that he was being ironic about her masochism and stupidity never occurred to his contemporaries or any critics until the post-modern period. Most tellingly, most of his contemporaries found his authorial adoration of her puzzling and repellent. As oppressed as Victorian women might be, readers in Thackeray's day, including men, did find Amelia's behavior abnormal.

But that said, one important fact stands out: I read every one of the 700 pages of this book. And this stood out to me because you do not want to know how many recent novels I've abandoned 100 pages in because I was so bored and so unable to get into the characters that I couldn't bear to read another word.

So that got me thinking about what it is that Thackeray was doing right. His plotting is humdrum. You aren't on the edge of your seat wondering what is going to happen to his characters. His characters' emotions are blunted and every time they threaten to turn into people with feelings you might care about, Thackeray steps out from behind the curtain and reminds you they are puppets meant to teach you a lesson about how rotten people really are.

But even so, Vanity Fair is still fun to read.

A couple reasons why suggest themselves. Even though each of the characters is meant, quite blatantly, to teach us a lesson, Thackeray makes them come alive with that brilliant choice of detail. Every scene and every bit of dialogue is grounded in reality. People walk around real rooms in real neighborhoods and talk to each other like real people would. And each character is painted in a way where they are unique, no matter what use the master puppeteer intends them for.

Becky's speeches could only be Becky's. Miss Crawley behaves as only she would do. This realism was what Thackeray contemporaries found so impressive in his writing. Tellingly, the only passages I found myself forced to skip were those where Thackeray descended to painting an ethnic stereotype--the Irish commander's wife and some of the European scenes where, having got rid of his most interesting characters, Thackeray seemed to be flailing around for something to say until he brings back Becky and finishes his book off with a denouement in which he proves just how little he understands about the emotional lives of actual women.

The other thing that kept me reading was what I think of as the "Gossip Factor." Once people seem real, we want to know what they've been up to. Think of how when you get together with people you haven't seen in a while, you want to know what all your mutual acquaintances are up to. They don't have to have been attacked by a vampire to interest you. You just want to know, are they dating someone, did they change jobs, what happened to their son? So it is with Thackeray's characters. He makes you want to know what they did next, whatever it might be, and that points to what a very good writer he is despite his tin ear for human emotion.

So I came away thinking that Vanity Fair is a puppet show, but realizing too that a good puppet show is compelling entertainment, which is why children even now enjoy them.

What can the aspiring writer take from this? How important it is to ground your characters in reality, to paint them with the telling details that turn them into individuals. That we must make sure our characters; personalities come through in the way they speak. Don't obsess about crafting an unusual plot because if you make your characters real enough, your reader will want to know more about them, even if the "more" is not all that astonishing.

I'd love to hear your ideas about what makes this book work for you, or if it didn't why it didn't.

Thackeray: The 19th Century's First Punk?

2009-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've always loved 19th century novels, with one exception. I could never quite get my head around Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Thackeray subtitled it "A novel without a hero" and I suspect that might have something to do with why.

Thackeray's view of humanity is dark. The way he tells his tale a lot closer to the tone of David Byrne and the other ground breaking punks of the 1980s than it is to Austen or Dickens. The latter are social satirists, but behind their writing you sense that as much as venal or even evil people infuriate them, they believe people could be kind to each other and that redeeming love is possible. There is something fundamentally optimistic about their vision of humankind, no matter how dark their stories may become--and Dickens' can become quite dark indeed.

But though Thackeray's tone, on the surface might make him seem closer to Austen than Dickens, in style, this is misleading. Thackeray has a much bleaker view of life. He gets you laughing, but when you are done laughing at his character-puppets--which is his characterization of them, not mine--you feel a bit less sure that any happy ending is possible, anywhere, for anyone.

It's possible the dark world-view seeping through his wit stems from the tragedy he experienced in his marriage. His young wife, whom he adored, became schizophrenic and had to be institutionalized. The law of the day made it impossible for him to divorce her and he might not have even if he could, given his love for her. This condemned him to live without a partner for the rest of his life and may have fatally affected his ability to trust in love, given how happy he had been in the early days of his marriage.

Whatever the explanation for Thackeray's dim view, his masterpiece, ironically, is a lot less popular now among serious readers than it was fifty years ago at the height of the uber-optimistic, totally fake 50s. Perhaps the degree to which cynicism pervades our media now takes much of the fun out of reading him. Readers have to turn to fiction to find satisfying happy endings and a positive world view--one reason why Romance, as a genre, continues to sell so strongly, even in a brutal market for all other kinds of reading.

The other problem with Thackeray is that much of his humor resembles what you see in today's cynically comic movies in that it is full of self-referential cultural references. But the culture he is referring to is too far in the past for us to get the jokes.

Austen's humor works a lot better for the modern reader because she stuck with making fun of universal traits of human nature. Everyone knows someone like Lady Catherine De Bourgh or Emma. But Thackeray frequently raises a laugh by poking fun at the novels his readers were familiar with, and that kind of humor goes right over the modern reader's head.

Fortunately, since I have been soaking my head in obscure early 19th century writing of late, I have been getting quite a few of his references and enjoying Vanity Fair far more than I could before.

Any of you who have ever researched Regency thieves' slang (cant) or read your way through Pierce Egan should still get a laugh from this Thackeray parody:

One two three! It is the signal that Black Vizard had agreed on.
"Mofy! is that your snum?" said a voice from the area. "I'll gully the dag and bimbole the clicky in a snuffkin."
"Nuffle your clod and beladle your glum banions," said Vizard with a dreadful oath. "This way men; if they screak, out with your snickers and slick! Look to the pewter room, Blowser. You, Mark to the old gaff's mopus box! and I," added he in a lower but more horrible voice. "I will look to Amelia."

This very passage is cited online by a blogger who used it to illustrate why he hates 19th century novels. All that impenetrable prose! The blogger, obviously, missed that this was parody. But in 150 years you can be sure the self-referential content today's cynical punk culture loves so well will be likely to suffer the exact same fate.

If there's a lesson here it is probably that if you want your work to live forever, stick to making fun of basic human nature. It worked pretty well for Shakespeare, too.

Music in the Regency Period

2009-08-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a wonderful book, Johannes Brahms: A Biography.Though it is describing events decades after the Regency period, this book is making me understand an important way in which the lives of all people living in the 19th century and before differed from ours.

In the Brahms biography the author points out that in his 34 years in Vienna, the center of the European musical universe, Brahms would have had 13 opportunities to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by an orchestra. That works out to one every two and a half years. Mostly he became acquainted with great works of the past by reading the sheet music or by hearing his friends play simplified arrangements of these great works arranged for the piano or perhaps a string quartet.

Most people, of course, would have had no chances to hear a professional production of most contemporary music. An English music lover like Jane Austen, experienced "music" in the context of neighborly get togethers where people performed piano arrangements of famous works that had stood the test of time.

In Austen's day, Beethoven's Ninth hadn't been composed yet, of course, as it came out in 1824, but his sonatas would have been available in sheet music form in the Regency and his other Symphonies and concertos would have been known and possibly available in sheet music forms arranged for piano or piano and violin.

However, it took a while for the musical amateur to appreciate the works of his middle period. Even critics considered them "noise" and "nonsense" when they first heard them, as they were so different from the orderly arrangements of notes and the logical chord changes they were accustomed to hearing from beloved composers like Mozart, Haydn and Handel. Austen never have heard a note of Beethoven.

But it is the rarity of music in this period that fascinates me living as I do in a time when music is so omnipresent. My dad was born decades before the advent of radio and widespread marketing of recorded music He told me once that he still remembered the first time he heard a piano. He was almost six years old and the piano was being played in a department store.

It was a revelatory moment for him that left him standing transfixed, while his mother tried to tug him away and get on with her shopping. It was a moment he remembered all his life. He attended live concerts almost weekly throughout his later years and owned one of the first stereo phonographs so he could listen to his music at home. But recorded music never satisfied him the way live music did.

His experience of music was entirely different from that of anyone now alive. But it gives us a hint of what music might have been like for people in the Regency period. Hearing music was a relatively rare event--especially music that was well performed beyond the amateur level--and it was valued in a way we can't imagine and probably had a psychological impact beyond anything we can imagine, overwhelmed as we are in an environment that is so filled with music that we have lost our ability to marvel at it.

In the Regency period, if you wanted to listen to music when you were alone you could chose from any piece you could play on whatever instrument you owned--assuming those you lived with would put up with it. With an invalid mother, Austen must often have had to console herself with the memory of the pieces she liked rather than the actual sound which might have disturbed the invalid's sleep.

With this in mind, you can see what a valuable present Jane Fairfax's piano really was. Without it she would have had no access to music except when her betters invited her to a musical evening where she'd be at the mercy of the tastes of the other invitees.

The only other place she would hear music would be at a ball where a small group of musicians of varying ability would play dance music. Many people probably attended these balls because it was their only chance to hear even semi-professionals play.

To hear professional musicians play music often--and by often we mean that you might have heard a favorite piece played once every 30 months or so, you would have had to be well off. To hear what you wanted to hear more frequently you would have had to be a dukes or a nabob. Only they had the resources to bring famous European performers and composers to England where they would perform privately whatever they were instructed to play. The super-rich could also afford to commission the pieces to which their names are still affixed.

Austen's collection of sheet music gives us an idea of the kinds of music she valued. It includes " songs by Handel and Haydn and by English composers of the day, like Dibdin, Samuel Webbe the younger and Shield, plus folk songs popular ballads and comic songs, Italian songs, French songs and operatic selections, also instrumental pieces by Corelli, Handel, Gluck, Haydn, Pleyel, Cramer and John Christian Bach." This last quotation comes from a discussion about music in Austen's writings and life you can read HERE.

Here is a snippet of the kind of music Austen and other Regency music lovers would have heard at the orchestral recital that would be, perhaps, a once in a lifetime event:

Here's another, with good video of the small orchestra used for the popular Baroque pieces still popular in the early 19th century.

Here is a song by Charles Dibden that Austen might have heard sung by friends:

A Real Regency Astrologer

2009-08-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

In the course of avoiding writing, I mean researching my book I ran into a fascinating account of a real astrologer who flourished in the Regency period.

He was John Varley who lived from 1778 - 1842. He is much better known to the world for his other claims to fame. He was a well known landscape painter who specialized in water colors. You can see many of his paintings by following the links you'll find on this Google Image Search.

But the main reason Varley is remembered is because he was a friend of William Blake, and scholars believe that it was his influence that led to Blake completing the astonishing series of drawings including The Ghost of A Flea which you can now see at the Tate Gallery.

Varley is dear to me because it turns out that it was he who first figured out the astrological function of the newly discovered planet Uranus. Readers of my novel, Lord Lightning, will find that the astrological meaning of Uranus plays an important part in that story.

Histories of science often claim that the discovery of new planets in the 1700 and 1800s dealt a death blow to astrology. But this is simply not true. Astrologers like Varley did what astrologers always do. They tracked the movements of the planets and watched their own charts to see what impact, if any, the new planet would have. Varley did just that, with impressive results.

As recounted by his son, Varley would get up every morning and look in his ephemeris to see what his daily transits would be and work out his secondary progressions. (We'll talk about what these astrological factors are in a future blog post.) Varley had some suspicions about what the new planet might mean, so when he saw an important Uranus transit to his natal chart one morning, he was convinced some dire event must follow.

As recounted in a public domain Google Book James Holmes and John Varley By Alfred Thomas Story, on the day of the transit, Varley was away from home, but when nothing disturbing occurred, he concluded that the event must be manifesting at his house. He rushed home. When he arrived he heard a cry of "fire!"and found his own house in flames.

His son Albert reported that Varley was so "delighted" at having discovered what the astrological effect of Uranus was that he sat down while his house was burning, even though he knew that his house was not insured for a penny, and wrote up an account of his discovery. He had timed the catastrophe to within a few minutes. His son said that he had suspected that the square or opposition of Uranus would have a bad effect but not exactly what. Although he lost everything in the fire he regarded that as a small matter compared with his discovery of the new planet's way of manifesting.

Any serious astrologer will have no difficulty understanding Varley's excitement, though most of us will have a difficult time timing events as closely as Varley did. Many of the traditional techniques Varley would have used were lost in the decades that followed his death when Astrology went through the transformation most closely associated with the Theosophists.

Modern psychologically-oriented Astrology derives from the teachings of people associated with the Theosophists who wrote in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though some of their techniques add richness to the traditional teachings, all too often they discarded time-tested ancient techniques they didn't understand in favor of new ones they'd made up.

Varley also predicted the death of fellow artist, William Collins RA to the very day years before the event took place.

Varley is only one of many people who are well-known to the world whose astrological pursuits have been dismissed by mainstream historians. William Blake took them seriously which is one reason he spent so much time with him and ended up doing his greatest drawings at Varley's home.

The Adventure Begins: Avon Buys Lord Lightning

2009-07-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

Publishers Marketplace: Dealmaker: Avon (Imprint)

Jenny Brown's debut LORD LIGHTNING, the first in an astrology-themed series ... to Tessa Woodward at Avon, in a three-book deal, at auction, ...by Emmanuelle Alspaugh at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management

Jenny Brown is my maiden name. I'm using it because I've used Janet Ruhl and Jenny Ruhl on other published nonfiction books.

This is a life-long dream come true and my excitement is tempered only by the fact that I have to produce another book as good as Lord Lightning for delivery next June.

What makes me the happiest about this sale, besides the fact it happened, is that Lord Lightning is the kind of historical romance I love to read. The details of the historical setting are accurate. The language has the feel of early 19th century prose, though it flows easily enough that a 21st century reader will enjoy it. My characters are driven by motivations that make sense in the context of their times. My characters are not only passionate and involved, they are witty and intelligent. If you enjoy Jane Austen and the genre of Jane Austen continuations, you will probably love this book.

Even the astrology my heroine uses is real astrology rooted in the techniques used in the Regency period. Astrologers will find birth data at the end of the book so they can create their own charts for my protagonists. But don't let the astrology scare you off. You don't need to believe in astrology to enjoy this compelling love story.

I'm pretty sure that it was the astrological theme that finally made me that rarest of aspiring novelists, the "debut author." That's because it helped me solve what some Regency writers call "the problem of the 10,000 dukes." Thousands of Regency romances have been published over the past 90 years, all of them set in the same, brief time period. Authors have created thousands more noblemen heroes than ever sat in the House of Lords in the Regency period or, for that matter, in all the centuries before or after it. Every detail found in every possible primary source has been worked into a plot by any one of dozens of talented authors and by hundreds of not so talented ones. This makes breaking in very hard, and I am very glad I was able to offer publishers something new, and even gladder I could do it in a way that did not involve zombies.

But none of this touches on what everyone is asking me about. So I'll cut to the chase: Yes, Lord Lightning does have sex scenes--and yes, they're hot. Not all my research has been confined to reading medical journals.

I don't have a firm publication date yet, but my wonderful agent believes it will be November 2010. That seems like a long time to wait, but I'll just have to live with it. I've been waiting to publish a novel since I was in elementary school.

From time to time I'll be posting here about Lord Lightning's progress and on other topics related to the novels and the astrological ideas that play a part in the series.

In case you wonder about the title of this blog, the whole series is tentatively named "Lords of the Seventh House." The Seventh House is the part of the chart that describes a person's marriage. In traditional astrology the "Lord" of a house is the planet whose own placement has a strong impact on how the house expresses itself in the person's life. Regency romance is all about Lords, of course, so I hope the title gives a hint of the fun that awaits readers.

Each of my books will feature a hero with a different Sun sign. Since I take the astrology seriously, the sun sign is only a starting point. Each hero has an entire chart filled with all the other planets that provide nuance and internal conflict.

I wish my readers didn't have to wait SO long to read about my deliciously wicked bad boy Leo, but that's how publishing works.

Meanwhile, it's back to work for me on my second hero, the Scorpio. . . .